Springfield Sports Hall of Famer Ramsey dies

Ray Ramsey, the most versatile athlete Springfield has ever produced, died Tuesday at 7 a.m. after a lengthy illness. He was 88.

Jim Ruppert

Ray Ramsey, the most versatile athlete Springfield has ever produced, died Tuesday morning at St. John’s Hospital after a lengthy illness. He was 88.

The 1940 Lanphier High School graduate was a standout in football, basketball and track. He was one of the original 24 inductees into the Springfield Sports Hall of Fame in 1991; it’s one of four Halls of Fame into which Ramsey has been inducted.

He played football and basketball and ran track at Bradley University, winning 13 varsity letters and earning All-America honors or the equivalent in all three. He scored 994 points in basketball, set three schools records in track and was a Little All-America halfback in football.

His college career was interrupted by four seasons of military service in the Navy, and when he came back he captained a Bradley basketball team that went 25-7. He also beat the world record-holder, Earl Dugger, in the 120-yard high hurdles at the Boston AAU meet. Ramsey once logged 27 consecutive first-place track and field finishes at Bradley — while competing in five different events. He also held school records in both hurdles events and the high jump and later served four years as Bradley’s track coach.

After his senior year at Bradley in 1947, he played in the College All-Star football game at Soldier Field, and the All-Stars scored one of their rare wins over the pros, a 16-0 decision over the Chicago Bears. Two of his teammates were Buddy Young and Elroy “Crazy Legs” Hirsch.

Ramsey played 10 seasons of professional football in three different leagues and was an All-Pro flanker while playing for Hamilton in the Canadian Football League. He spent two seasons in the NBA with the Tri-City Blackhawks and Baltimore Bullets, but by then the two-sport grind was too much.

In football, he played for the Chicago Cardinals in the NFL from 1950-53, and in his final season with the team he intercepted 10 passes and returned them a team-record 237 yards.

In a 1991 interview, Ramsey said his favorite sport was the one he was playing.

“It was such a great thing to participate at that level,” Ramsey said. “They were all my favorite. It depended on what season it was.”

He played until he was 37 before returning to Bradley and coaching the track team for four years while he was playing pro football.

Ramsey was hired as teacher at Lanphier in 1958 and served as head track coach and assistant basketball and football coach. He spent almost 30 years teaching at his alma mater, retiring in 1986. In the summers, he also ran a summer track program that featured, among others, his daughters and Kim Schofield Werth.

“I spent more time with him from age 15 to 27 than I did with anybody,” said Kim Werth, also a charter member of the Springfield Sports Hall of Fame and an eight-time individual state track champion while at Southeast. “We had a great friendship, a great respect for one another. I loved the man.”

Ramsey was long and lean, very soft-spoken. He had a coaching style that might not work today.

“He was a silent force,” Werth said. “A lot of people didn’t get him. I got him. We got each other.

“That man was in my face in a very polite manner from start to finish. There were days I’d be like, ‘Hey, Mr. Ramsey, what’d you think of that?’ He’d look at me, says, ‘You’ve still got a ways to go,’ and walk away.

“I don’t look at things like a lot of people do. A lot of people are interested in warm and fuzzy, I’m about getting it done. I got him.”

He also wasn’t a man caught up in his own accomplishments.

“I didn’t even know until I was high school age what my father had accomplished,” said 42-year-old Kelly Ramsey, the youngest of Ramsey’s five children and his caretaker the past seven years. “In later years I pretty much did up his house with all his stuff.

“My father was very humble. He didn’t make a lot out of what he had accomplished, not as we were growing up. It was not a big deal. He was just dad to us.”

The five Ramsey offspring — Cathy, Chris, Cheri, Lisa and Kelly — range in age from 42 to 62. Ray Ramsey’s wife, Elsie, died in 2002.

Ray Ramsey was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 1991. He had been living at home until June, when he went to a nursing home. Four days after he was admitted, he slipped and broke his hip, and his condition had progressively gotten worse.

Kirlin, Egan and Butler is in charge of funeral arrangements.

Jim Ruppert can be reached at 788-1549.

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